countdownfandomcom-20200215-history
An Entrance Strategy for Iran
"An Entrance Strategy for Iran" was the 14th Special Comment delivered on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, airing on 11 January 2007. The Comment And lastly, as promised, a special comment about the president's address last night. Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic, certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq by offering instead an entrance strategy for Iran. Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me, only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran. Only this president could extol the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and then take it's most far sighted recommendation, engage Syria and Iran, and transform it into threaten Syria and Iran, when al Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten to Syria, and when President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us. This is diplomacy by skimming. It is internationalism by drawing pictures of superman in the margins of the textbooks. It is a presidency of Cliff Notes. And to Iran and Syria, and yes, also to the insurgents in the Iraq, we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest, who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet and shouts at the other guy's friends, "okay, which one of you is next?" Mr. Bush, the question is no longer what are you thinking, but rather, are you thinking at all? I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended, you said last night. And yet, without any authorization from the public, who spoke loudly and clearly to you in November's elections, without any consultation with the Congress, in which key members of your own party, like Senator Brownback and Senator Coleman and Senator Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground, without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker/Hamilton urged you to do, you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment on America's behalf to do whatever you want in Iran. Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel are willing now to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war. It is so weary that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq will be on their second tours, or their third tours, or their fourth tours, and now you are going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well? Who is left to go and fight, sir? Who are you going to send to interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria? Laura and Barney? The line is from the movie Chinatown, and I quote it often, middle of a drought, the mortician chuckles, and the water commissioner drowns, only in L.A. Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq, and the president wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria? Maybe that's the point, to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish is this latest war strategy, strategy that is for the war already underway, not the one on deck. We are to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad, and 4,000 more into province, to give the Iraqi government breathing space. In and of itself, that is an awful and insulting term. The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered to give breathing space to a government that just turned the first, and perhaps the most sober act of any democracy, the capital punishment of an ousted dictator, into vengeance lynching, so barbaric and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority that it might have offended the Klu Klux Klan of the 19th century. And what will our men and women in Iraq do? The ones who will truly live and die during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a year ahead which will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve. They will try to seal up Sadr City and other part of Baghdad, in which the civil war is worst. Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other, but rather, they can focus anew on killing our people, because last night the president foolishly all but announced that we will be sending those 21,500 pour souls over, but no more after that And if the whole thing fizzles out, we're going home. The plan fails militarily. The plan fails symbolically. The plans fails politically. Most important, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility. You speak of mistakes and the responsibility resting with you, but you do not admit to making those mistakes, and you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist towards Iran and Syria. In fact, when you briefed news correspondents, off the record, before that speech, they were told, once again, if you knew what we knew, if you saw what we saw. If you knew what we knew was how we got into this morass in Iraq in the first place. The problem arose when it turned out that the question was not whether or not we knew what you knew, but whether or not you knew what you knew? You, sir, have become the president that cried wolf. All that you say about Iraq now could be gospel. All that you say about Iran and Syria now could be prescient and essential. We no longer have a clue, sir. We heard too many stories. Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong about Iran. Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of the grounds wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran. Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture. They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories. They are now fertilizer indeed. The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care. I read this list last night before the president's speech, and it bears repetition, because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context. Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital. He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units. He told us about WMD, mobile labs, secret sources, aluminum tubes, yellow cake. He has told us the war in necessary because Saddam was a material threat, because of 9/11, because of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, terrorism in general, to liberate Iraq, to spread freedom, to spread democracy, to prevent terrorism by gas price increases, because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad, because 439 words into that speech last night he trotted out 9/11 again. In advocating and prosecuting this war, he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab al Zarqawi, to get Moqtada al Sadr, to get bin Laden. He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government de-Baathified. He shortchanged Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for wide spread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence. He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there based on partisanship, not professionalism He and his government told us America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throws. He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary. He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary. He has trumpeted the turning points, the fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam, elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam. He has assured us we would be greeted as liberators with flowers. As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course. We were never about stay the course. We would never have to go door to door in Baghdad, and last night, that to gain Iraqi's trust, we would go door to door in Baghdad. He told us the enemy was al Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria. The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost us another 6 billion. And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of Generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people. Oh, and there is one more to add to the list tonight, Oceania has always been at war with east Asia. Mr. Bush, this is madness. You have lost the military. You lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies in this. You are losing the credibility not just of your presidency, sir, but more importantly, of your office itself. And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing that. This becomes your legacy sir, how many of those you addressed last night as your fellow citizens, you just sent to their deaths. And for what, Mr. Bush? So that the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you? See Also Entrance Strategy for Iran